Energy Tomorrow Blog

Blog Archives

About This Blog

Energy Tomorrow is brought to you by the American Petroleum Institute (API), which is the only national trade association that represents all aspects of America's oil and natural gas industry. Our more than 500 corporate members, from the largest major oil company to the smallest of independents, come from all segments of the industry. They are producers, refiners, suppliers, pipeline operators and marine transporters, as well as service and supply companies that support all segments of the industry.

Platts – Stabilizing crude oil prices and falling drilling costs could soon boost US production by hundreds of thousands of barrels per day, an upstream oil and gas economist with the US Energy Information Administration, said Monday.

"We're starting to see a turn in production," Grant Nulle said during a panel discussion at EIA's annual conference. "Conditions are conducive for this to happen."

While recent EIA data has shown production declines at existing wells have outpaced production from new wells, a rebound is likely as operators focus on the most efficient wells and look to increase well completions amid falling costs and continued availability of capital, Nulle said.

In a recent survey of 85,000 wells drilled between 2012 and 2014, initial production rates have roughly doubled, he said.

Wall Street Journal – Low oil prices and economic growth have helped drive up consumer demand for energy across the world in 2015, the International Energy Agency said Thursday, a phenomenon seen from U.S. gasoline stations to Chinese auto dealerships.

The IEA’s closely watched oil-market report lent some support to an idea pushed by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other producers: that collapsing oil prices would spur more consumer demand and eventually send prices back up. The benchmark U.S. oil price hit a six-month high on Wednesday.

The IEA said world demand for oil would increase by 1.4 million barrels a day this year, 300,000 barrels a day faster than it previously forecast, to a daily average of 94 million barrels this year. Global demand in 2014 was about 92.6 million barrels a day, the IEA said.

NPR – There's a serious problem in the American economy: Big corporations are doing well, but real household income for average Americans has been falling over the past decade — down 9 percent, according to census data.

"That's not good for America," says Harvard economist Michael Porter. "That's not good for America's standard of living. That's not good for our ultimate vitality as a nation."

That's why Porter's excited about the deep reserves of natural gas and oil that have been made accessible by hydraulic fracturing technology, or fracking — a boon he examines in detail in a new report.

"It is a game changer," Porter says. "We have estimated that already, this is generating a substantial part of our GDP in America. It's at least as big as the state of Ohio. We've added a whole new major state, top-10 state, to our economy."

BloombergBusiness – The U.S. has taken Russia’s crown as the biggest oil and natural-gas producer in a demonstration of the seismic shifts in the world energy landscape emanating from America’s shale fields.

U.S. oil production (green line in chart, left) rose to a record last year, gaining 1.6 million barrels a day, according to BP Plc’s Statistical Review of World Energy released on Wednesday. Gas output also climbed, putting America ahead of Russia as a producer of the hydrocarbons combined.

The data showing the U.S.’s emergence as the top driller confirms a trend that’s helped the world’s largest economy reduce imports, caused a slump in global energy prices and shifted the country’s foreign policy priorities.

“We are truly witnessing a changing of the guard of global energy suppliers,” BP Chief Economist Spencer Dale said in a presentation. “The implications of the shale revolution for the U.S. are profound.”

BP Magazine – Why is natural gas the fuel of the future? Despite pressures on the industry today – with gas prices down and capital investment under pressure – longer term trends still point to the increasing significance of natural gas in the energy mix. BP Magazine looks at some of the numbers behind the story of the world’s strongest-growing and cleanest fossil fuel.

Over the next 20 years, natural gas is expected to catch up with oil and coal and emerge as the main hydrocarbon component of a more sustainable energy mix. The fastest-growing fossil fuel – which is primarily methane – is mainly used for power generation, as well as in homes, offices, shops and other commercial locations for heating and cooling. It’s also a raw material in the production of fertilizer and other chemicals – and it is sometimes used as a fuel for transport as well.

Platts (The Barrel Blog) – When OPEC left production unchanged in November last year many understood it to be US or Canadian tight oil producers who would suffer, but thanks to technological advances — to paraphrase Mark Twain — the reports of the death of the tight boom have been greatly exaggerated.

After OPEC’s announcement of stable production, crude prices fell under $50/b, and the obituaries began to be written.

But lower prices forced companies to become hyper-vigilant on costs, and the result was the opposite of what may have been intended. US and Canadian production continued to grow, and E&P companies became leaner and more efficient — leading to a more competitive industry.

The savings from technological advances and more efficient internal processes, unlike the drop in rig dayrates that could rise again when the market turns, will be a more permanent feature of the North American oil market.

The numbers tell the story. The North American oil rig count dropped from its peak in early October at 1,609 to 646 for the week-ending May 29, yet productions is headed in the opposite direction — US oil output hit 9.586 million b/d, its highest daily rate since the EIA began weekly production reports in 1983. The EIA recently forecast another million b/d of oil production growth until it peaks in 2020 at 10.603 million b/d.

New York Post – Six months after Gov. Andrew Cuomo banned fracking as too hazardous, the federal government released a report Thursday saying there’s no evidence the drilling practice has caused widespread harm to drinking water in the United States.

“Based on available scientific information, we found out that hydraulic fracturing activities in United States are carried out in a way that has not had widespread systemic impact on drinking-water resources,” said Thomas Burke, deputy assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

“It is a new lens, so we can all make better decisions about public health.”

The report, issued in draft form after three years of study, cautioned that safeguards are still needed because some drinking water has been contaminated.

“The number of documented impacts on groundwater resources is relatively low,” Burke said.

CNBC – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in a Thursday report that it found no evidence fracking has a “widespread” impact on drinking water.

The EPA report concluded that there are above and below ground mechanisms by which fracking have the potential to impact drinking water resources, but that the number of identified cases were “small” compared to the number of fracking wells.

“We did not find evidence that these mechanisms [of potentially affecting water] have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States,” the report said.

The Hill: House Republicans have found reasons to agree with some parts of the Obama administration’s energy infrastructure proposal.

GOP leaders in the House Energy and Commerce Committee told Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz that they are largely in agreement on the need to improve pipelines, electric transmission lines, energy storage and other pieces of infrastructure.

Moniz testified at the hearing to promote the Quadrennial Energy Review, which the administration released in April to call for comprehensive infrastructure improvements worth billions of dollars.

“Many people are even asking — not surprisingly — is there enough common ground between our efforts and the Obama administration to enact meaningful energy legislation,” Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), chairman of the energy and power subcommittee, said at the Tuesday hearing.

The Huffington Post (Sean McGarvey): The American job market is the best it's been in six years, according to the latest government data. The jobless rate is below 6 percent for the first time since 2008.

And in 2013, the United States became the world's top producer of oil and natural gas – surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia.

This U.S. energy boom is creating many new jobs here in America, and it's a leading contributor to American workers' vaulting out of the unemployment line and into the middle class. Our leaders must continue to support domestic energy exploration, which is proving our nation's strongest job-growth engine.

According to the American Petroleum Institute, investments in updating U.S. energy infrastructure alone could generate an estimated $1.14 trillion in capital investments – creating both jobs and energy savings from now until 2025.

Related Projects

Energy Tomorrow is a project of the American Petroleum Institute – the only national trade association that represents all aspects of America’s oil and natural gas industry – speaking for the industry to the public, Congress and the Executive Branch, state governments and the media.